1. Statement of Jeffrey D. Zients
Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director for Management
Office of Management and Budget
Before the Budget Committee
United States Senate
October 29, 2009
Chairman Conrad, Ranking Member Gregg, and Members of the Committee:
I appreciate the opportunity to come before you today to discuss the Obama
Administration’s efforts to improve the performance of the Federal government. In
particular, I applaud the Committee’s efforts to form a new Task Force on Government
Performance and look forward to working with you.
The President believes that it more important than ever to maximize the effectiveness of
every tax dollar we spend. We must be aggressive in identifying which programs work,
and which do not. When programs work, we should support them and continue to
push for improved performance. When they do not, we need to reform or terminate
them. To accomplish this, we need to measure the performance of programs and
continually search for more effective and efficient ways to operate.
During my 20 years in the private sector as a CEO and advisor to CEOs, I found that
leadership, measurement, and a motivated workforce create the foundation for good
performance. I am confident that the same is true in government.
Congress and previous Administrations laid some of the groundwork for government-
wide performance management, starting with the Clinton Administration’s
implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). The
Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) developed by the Bush Administration tried
to create metrics at the program level. The result is that today we have thousands of
metrics and plans in a number of overlapping systems.
The test of a performance management system is whether it is used. Despite the extent
and breadth of these historic efforts, the current approach fails this test. Congress
doesn’t use it. Agencies don’t use it. And it doesn’t produce meaningful information
for the public.
Most metrics are process-oriented and not outcomes-based. We do not track progress
on goals that cut across agencies. Overall, too much emphasis has been placed on
producing performance information to comply with a checklist of requirements instead
of using it to drive change.
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2. This must change. Federal managers and employees at all levels must use performance
goals and measures to set priorities, monitor progress, and diagnose problems. They
must learn from practices that work and those that do not. They need to learn how to
use goals and measures to motivate the best from our workforce and our service
delivery partners to achieve greater results and to allocate scarce resources wisely.
We can build on promising performance management developments in State and local
governments and other countries. The State of Virginia’s Virginia Performs website
shows how government can clearly communicate state performance priorities, progress,
problems, and strategies to the public. Washington’s Government Management
Accountability and Performance program and Maryland’s StateStat illustrate the value
of goal-focused, data-rich discussions to find the root causes of problems and to devise
smarter strategies to tackle them. Local governments, including New York City;
Baltimore, Maryland; and King County, Washington have effectively used performance
management practices to improve outcomes, reducing crime and increasing housing
starts for example, and drive down costs. Other countries, including the United
Kingdom and New Zealand, offer instructive lessons.
As the Administration develops this performance management system, we are
committed to taking the best of what works – in other governments, the private sector
and recent Federal efforts – to create a new performance management system. This
system will at the foundation of our efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of the Federal government. In developing this performance management system, there
are five key principles we will follow:
1) Senior leader ownership of performance management process. It is critical that
senior agency leaders “own” the overall performance management process and their
agency goals and measurements. Secretaries and Deputies will be charged with the
setting of agency goals, will be held responsible for performance against those goals
and their related measurements and will be expected to be actively engaged in all
aspects of the performance management process.
2) Cascading goals and measurements. A clear line must link agency strategic goals
and measurements to unit-level, program-level and ultimately individual targets.
Unfortunately, few agencies have historically had agency goals cascade down to
unit or program targets or understood how performance against specific program
and unit goals resulted in success – or failure – against agency-wide objectives. Both
linkages are critical to the functioning of a successful performance management
system.
3) Outcome-oriented, cross-agency goals and measurements. Outcome-oriented
goals and measures connect government agencies to their missions. Too often in the
past targets have been internal and process oriented. Similarly, achieving broad
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3. government outcomes often requires contributions from multiple actors across
different agencies and often inside and outside of government. Goals and
measurements must support coordination across these organizational boundaries.
These must also reflect clear delineation of lines of responsibility, explicitly
identifying who a “goal owner” is and what other organizations are expected to
contribute toward a common objective. Similarly, a given unit’s measurements must
reflect their differing contributions toward common goals.
4) Relentless review and accountability. As has been noted above, measurement has
no value if it is not used by decision makers. Clear communication of progress
against targets and frequent reviews of performance against plans are essential.
These reviews must be performed at all levels of government, including program,
unit and agency level reviews, as well as reviews by OMB and other components of
the White House of overall agency performance. These reviews must be done on a
regular basis, probably at least quarterly. Only this kind of relentless review process
will result in performance management becoming ingrained into the culture of
government.
5) Transparent process. Achieving important government goals requires the active
engagement of the public, Congress, and the overall government workforce.
Transparency plays a critical role in this engagement, promoting understanding of
what we in the government are doing, stimulating idea flow and involvement of
broader groups, communicating results and creating accountability for agency
managers. Such transparency is therefore critical to the success of any Federal
performance management system.
Using these five principles, we are committed to driving performance gains across the
Federal government. This is an ambitious undertaking. However, we have already
begun to move forward on several fronts.
Priority Performance Goals for Every Agency
In this year’s spring budget guidance to agencies, OMB asked every major agency to
identify a small number – three to eight – of ambitious, outcome-oriented high priority
goals which they intend to achieve in the next 12 to 24 months. Senior leaders are
actively involved in this effort, including Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries. This level
of involvement is a significant break from the past. We expect agency leaders to review
their progress against their goals on an ongoing basis and OMB will monitor progress
here also. At the same time, agencies are identifying goals, such as climate change and
homelessness, which are a high priority for multiple agencies and require close
collaboration.
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4. Management Dashboards
Management dashboards have proven an effective means for succinctly conveying real
time performance data in both the private and public sectors. In June, we launched the
IT Dashboard, which covers all major IT projects across government. The IT Dashboard
makes it possible to review cost and schedule variance for every major Federal
government IT project. The dashboard also shows how each agency’s Chief
Information Officer has assessed performance. The IT Dashboard is already having an
impact. As a result of this effort the VA, for example, put 45 over-budget or over-
schedule projects on hold until it decides which to continue and which to terminate.
We plan similar dashboards for other common government functions, including
procurement, financial management, and personnel management.
Customer-Facing Performance Information
We have begun using dashboards not just to improve our administrative functions, but
to serve agency customers. In June, the President charged Secretary Napolitano and the
team at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to set up,
within 90 days, a system that allows applicants to see their application status via web or
email updates, how long each step in the process normally takes, and the speed of the
applicant’s case compared to other similar cases. The site went live on September 24,
exactly 90 days after President’s announcement and makes what had been a notoriously
opaque process much more transparent. We are encouraging agencies to identify other
service areas which can benefit from similar customer-facing systems.
Rigorous Evaluations
For certain types of programs, regular measurement is not sufficient. These programs
require periodic in-depth evaluations to determine their effectiveness. On October 7th,
OMB Director Orszag encouraged Federal agencies to request FY2011 funding to
conduct significant evaluations in social, educational, and economic programs as well
as begin to strengthen agency evaluation capacity. He also established an inter-agency
evaluation working group and instructed all Federal agencies to make evaluations of
program impacts readily available online.
Performance Leadership
Dr. Shelley Metzenbaum, who joined our OMB team a month ago, is leading our
performance measurement and management effort. Among the Obama
Administration’s Cabinet and sub-cabinet appointments are several former Governors,
state officials, and local officials, who have experience using performance goals and
measures to drive government change. We are enlisting them and other interested
officials across Federal agencies to work together as a vanguard for Federal
performance management. They are developing real-time systems for measuring their
performance and managing their agencies.
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5. As we move forward, we are also identifying current performance management
requirements and systems that do not meet these principles, and will either eliminate or
streamline them. This will include making the Performance and Accountability Reports
more useful by scaling back their hundreds of pages per agency per year.
OMB is also using performance measures, evaluations, and other relevant data about
need and program context to inform budget decisions. The President’s FY 2010 Budget
proposed reduced funding or the termination of 121 programs that that had not
accomplished the goals set for them, that operated inefficiently, or that were
unnecessary because the program objectives were being better addressed by another
program. Agency goals and relevant performance information will also inform our
FY2011 budget decisions.
As we undertake these efforts, we would like to work with the Budget Committee to
make sure the information you receive from agencies serves you well. We look forward
to partnering with you as we learn more about the Committee’s performance
improvement priorities. In particular, we believe you have a unique perspective for
examining how the government can more effectively achieve broad goals through
multiple programs that cut across agency and appropriation boundaries.
I thank the Committee for holding this hearing and for your belief in improving Federal
performance. I look forward to working with you, with the other members of this
panel, the newly formed Task Force, with Federal employees across the nation, and
with our service delivery partners to accomplish this objective. Mr. Chairman and
Members of the Committee, I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
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